Tonight's TiVo Task: Smallville

Okay, I'll be square with you:  I'm not a Smallville fan.  More of a peruser, actually.  Can't watch it in real time, only on TiVo, so's I can jump not just commercials, but Tom Welling's perma-brood, like he's trapped in a perpetual phantom zone of an Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot; Kristen Kreuk with her single facial gesture no matter the emotion, and her engaging-as-cardboard line delivery, not to mention her curiously long canine teeth (I'm convinced she's part vampire); and the way-too-rich/tries-too-hard-to-be-cool-cold-and-calculating Lex Luthor, especially Michael Rosenbaum's heavy-handed monologues de sinister (in all fairness, though, I think it's the script more than the actor).  The whole shtick is often too saccharine or too cheesy for my taste, and the dialogue is so cringe-inducing that I often just watch it with the volume off.  Each episode's structure seems to be very chip-off-the-90210-block, which was annoying in its formula even back then.  Truth to tell, I think The Hills is more compelling television, with a villain in Spencer Pratt that even Smallville's Brainiac cringes from.

Still, tonight is the "Legion" episode I've been eagerly anticipating for a while.  Brainiac, my favorite baddie in the comics (and the least annoying character on the show) possesses Chloe's body, and three strangers from the future join forces with Clark to perform an exorcism, super-hero-style.  Who's kung-fu will be stronger?  Well, that's probably pretty obvious if you've got two functioning brain cells, but for geeks and fans and us old-schoolers from the halcyon days of Adventure Comics, tonight should be a real treat.

I may even break tradition and watch it in real time.